


Rhigosis

by ObservationMuted



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Artistic License was taken with Norse myth and Marvel cannon, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, Yggdrasil is significant, non-sexual nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:18:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObservationMuted/pseuds/ObservationMuted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every answer that has ever been resides under the bark of the life tree. Here is the beginning and the end, that which implicitly understood all moments at once. The knowledge is a heavy burden.</p>
<p>None have looked upon the tree and lived.</p>
<p>Rhigosis (ri-go'sis) The perception of cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Loki falls.

Rhigosis.  
(Avengers Fiction.)  


Author note: I do not own what is not mine.  
Disclaimer: I am going to bend Norse myth and Marvel canon into something a bit more poetic.

…

…

It is Loki’s magic that saves him. This he doesn't question.

He falls. Until he no longer registers the sensation of falling. A descent that is continuous and subtle and abrasive. He falls mute. He falls blindly. He falls in a silence that tugs at the back of his throat for it cannot be filled nor questioned nor brought before him and lain bare.

It simply is where he is. Spatial ratios and distance cease to mean, cease to have meaning or give explanation. He registers something and the line between reality and physical sensation blurs itself further. Wipes over a part of his mind that tells him he choose to let go. Because he would never will himself to this and he cannot recall which hand last held on. 

There is the definitive feeling of magic, the spark of something that carries itself by force through his blood and he recalls what limbs are only because his burn. He throws his head back in the darkness and feels his spine bend harshly. He wonders… in the base of his bone marrow and the back of his mind… if he has fallen somewhere he cannot return from. A bolt of something singes up his left leg and he screams a silent noise into the emptiness.

He feels his lungs expand and knows not how he breathes. In and out his mind goes. A twist and a bent incorrectness as something presses at him and pulls his skin away from his bones. 

It is neither cold nor warm and he feels no shift in the air as he falls. There is no air. No organic sensation to hold onto or catalog or identify as familiar. His magic sparks at the weak points in the leather of his amour. It erodes the metal, etches markings he cannot see into the buckles and fastenings of his clothing, the plates of his amour burn against him. The sensation lasts, unpleasant and unbearable. Tolerable and welcome in the face of nothing.

Eventually the leather cannot hold to such abuse and it fades, falling from him as he falls. The metal, he assumes, vanishes with it. 

He bites into his lip, hard enough to taste the copper of his insides and wonder why he hasn't starved. A something, a sound-or-a-hand-or-a-mouth brushes his temple and he regrets shunning the affection of others. All those bodies who wished to bed him, never as many as Thor, but plenty enough. A press to his back as he shudders and pulls his eyes closed against the light-less void.

He knows not how long it lasts.

The force of it is unlike anything he ever knew. From weightless to awareness. A dark reaches into the back of his memory. Grasps at scraps of things he knows and knew. He tries to pull his knees inward, towards himself. Single scream opens up his raw throat and grinds against new eardrums.

Pale fingertips press gently into dirt.


	2. In which Loki looks upon the tree.

Rhigosis.  
(Avengers Fiction)  


Author Note: I do not own what is not mine.  
Disclaimer: I have taken deliberate poetic license with Norse mythology, Marvel canon and italics.

…

…

He doesn't expect this. The landing always comes after the falling. Blinks hard against the light that has appeared, diffused and ever sharp. He is without clothing or direction.

Yet there is magic. Both of him and existing seamlessly outside him. Awareness of it sings along his hypersensitive nerves.

Shoulders and shaking arms refuse to bear weight, a retching cough winds through him. Airway blocked by bitter liquid for a moment. The warmth of it slides past his lips and Loki gasps. Ribs and empty hollow stomach remind him that he should be dead. Shuddering heaves flair up again, press his body back down into the soil.

He reaches, fingers tangling in new shoots of grass and some sparse leaves. There is life here. Hip bones jut out against anemic skin. Loki registers the sensation of dampness, spreading across the expanse of his back. Shallow cuts. Multiplied a dozen-fold and hacking into him. His skin is broken in so many places. Dirt sticks to his stomach, the defined bones of his ankles. Presses forehead to forearm and bites back a cry.

He has forgotten what the inside of his mouth taste like.

A flock of birds takes off suddenly, lightning strikes the ground. It should remind him, pull at a place between heart and bone. The sun continues itself and Loki chances a glance at the lot of it. Pries his eyes open to see where fate has cast him. 

None have looked upon the tree and lived.

He questions, second guesses what is directly in front of him. Yet there is no room for doubt.

It is old and brilliant and reaching and spiraling endlessly upward, outwards. Holding everything aloft and simply existing as that which binds it all, everything has it’s center in this spirit. Because here was the beginning and the end, that which implicitly understood all moments, at once.

He can feel the soil shift underneath his body a will that vibrates and moves motionlessly, a presence that pulls him closer. Every answer that has ever been needed or searched for resides under the bark of the life tree. Loki wonders if he is not meant to survive this moment. Odin didn't and the All Father had learned the words to raise the dead and create love from nothing. The price for that knowledge had been dying, a fraction of life in exchange for perfect miracles.

He pulls himself to his knees. The feel of rough fabric meets his skin and Loki wonders when this clothing appeared. For surely it had left him in the falling, because he cannot recall it. His eyes widen, he wonders if he should think of the tree as mother or father. His nose bleeds, spattering drops across the backs of his hands, then down the white alabaster of his throat.

Loki stands and balances his weight on the balls of his feet. Eases forward.

When he gets close enough he stops. Kneels again, sits. His weight on his shins as he leans closer. A hand splayed, fingers wide. The coarse tunic fading in and out of vision. It covers him as completely as his amour did, then it its gone entirely. The sharpness of his sight slides out of tune.

Loki cannot hear anything.

Cloth slides over his spine. Appearing an instant later as a baggy tunic. Making him feel like he did when he was a small child, swimming in the clothing he borrowed from Thor.

Without looking up, he can see the leaves fall through air. He understands that new buds bloom and un-spool in distant places. Death precedes life. The soil underneath him shimmers a reminder that he sits on a dead portion of the tree, the part which feeds the living pieces. Loki wonders, but he does not hesitate.

He presses his hand to the bark of the tree.


	3. In which Loki gains knowledge.

Rhigosis.  
(Avengers Fiction.)

Author Note: I do not own what is not mine.   
Disclaimer: This is the part where everything starts going stream of consciousness. References to mental reprogramming via overwhelming force. If that might be an issue for any of you, take note.

…

…

Loki understands. 

He is holding onto his body with a wisp of consciousness, watching his frame slump forward. He regards the fluttering heartbeat of his body with an amount of logic that should otherwise unease him.

The nature of the tree strings him out and bears down upon him with an intensity he has no name for. It opens him up, pushes and aligns the mechanisms inside him. He is brought back and forth between enlightenment and insanity, he forgets which is correct. The tree knows right and wrong, darkness, light, peace, war, chaos and destruction. It does not value one above the other. The tree knows the words Odin will speak to work miracles, knows the story of the last day each of the nine worlds turns.

The garment leaves his body as Loki‘s mind spins around. He is shown the lives of those that he knows. Even those he knows distantly. The birth of his father, his true father. It matters for a moment, before it becomes knowledge alongside other knowledge. The tree doesn't tell him which is his father and which is the man that scooped him from the gore of a battlefield and called him son. Both lives are blurred, births in unison. Every breath taken and step traveled and sight beheld. Thor’s life is shown as well. Loki is unaware of his own face, repeatedly appearing in the range of Thor’s vision.

It is knowledge, every life and the duration of it. All things. Behind his eyes and inside his head in a way that makes perfect sense and breaks him completely. The magic eases it, fire and ice. The tree is the origin of all magic and it blessedly soothes as it shatters. 

He is watching and the tree is pressing, tearing at him. None have looked upon this tree and lived. Loki asks it why it called to him. Why it allows this eye opening clarity. The question dies in the back of his mouth. His mind registers that his body is swallowing, gasping for air.

The end of all things repeats itself, overshadowed… overshadowing the beginning of the time he calls the present. Two heartbeats are still somewhere, not dead but not born. They wait for their time, the time after the end of this one. Loki feels sick gratitude as a blade is driven between his ribs, torn down and lodged in his insides. Abruptly he is a child, walking the halls of a library that he nearly calls home. The tree doesn't recognize the power he wields at so young an age, for that power is nothing compared to what weaves through him, holds him, binds him, keeps him breathing, supports the nine realms and all the space between them, holds everything at proper distance until it is the correct time. The power of a single god cannot stand against the tree. It is alive and it is older than life.

Before and after, during. 

The answers come. Even those he isn't ready for, the ones that the tree sews into his mind in case he tries to forget. He trembles. He notices every mistake every mortal has ever made. Sees them all die, hundreds of years of dying captured in an instant. Thousands of years, billions of nameless seconds, all filled with the end. A million exhales multiplied through time. There is fire. Shame. Regret. He understands and then it becomes a screaming insanity. He knows why Thor asked him such a simple question. Loki understands why he will not be a king.

It burns, that knowledge. All knowledge. For the tree bears that burden with a grace Loki will never manage.

The tree lightens it’s hold, sliding more of Loki’s mind back into his body. Loki is grateful to taste the air, coughing hard into the dirt. He struggles to sit up, regain his position. Kneeling before the tree, a fingertip pressed to the bark. There is no color left in Loki’s skin. No spare bulk left on his bones, thin muscle and vibrant blue veins appear as they will. He presses his hand to the tree, a quiet apology humming in his mind. 

He had not meant to shy away, saw a fingertip pressed to bark as weakness, as fear… and he had repented. He understands, the tree doesn't forgive. It bears no grudge and harbors no favoritism.

So Loki continues to see. As the tree sees and allows him to see.

Odin had once walked the branches of the tree, centuries before Loki set foot upon them. He sees the death of a mortal with abnormally long life, a damaged soul. He watches Thor stagger eight steps backwards, feels the way the snake’s venom eats clean through to bone. He sees Thor die. The tree allows him to watch it and live it and feel it. 

The tree allows him to stay there, frozen in an event that hasn't happened, has happened. 

It allows him to watch the life leave Thor’s eyes until it becomes just another image. Just another event as absolute as the birth of the worlds. It allows him to mourn. Forget and carry on with the knowing that this death will come to pass. All in due time and each inevitable.

The tree shows him how he fell. Reminds him that he had let go without saying a word. It shows him the bridge, not yet repaired. Long from rebuilt anew. The tree’s presence hums against his own mind. He doesn't know how to ask about magic. Has no need to. The knowledge is there, pouring into him on top of all the other things he has learned.

Time passes in this manner, unaccounted for.

The tree weakens, by an amount that Loki can only marginally understand. The tree does not die, it is not dying. Though it wanes slightly in his presence. That is when he learns the thing that drives his mind blank for a moment. Because he is to be the bringer of the end. The one that decides to break the nine realms, and in doing so halves the tree. Decimates the balance that connects and holds and orders all.

None have looked upon… except Odin. Who died in the effort and hung from the tree for days. He had learned also. Just as Loki was learning now. The tree had told him, told them, those who walk the branches and press their hands to the tree. Odin had known when he beheld him as a blood smeared child that Loki would be the one to guide them all to their ends.

Loki understands. Knowledge mixed so evenly with despair and anger. For the tree bears a grace that he knows but cannot have. 

The inside of Loki’s mouth begins to crack, his lips bleed because he forgets the air dries them. Forgotten them to exposure when he abandoned his body and listened. He is crying ocean water from his eyes, each vertebrae of his spine presses insistently against his skin. He is starved. The grass has grown around him, taller than he recalls it. 

When he is found, his arm wrenched from the tree, he goes mute.

He has been screaming and praying and apologizing for months. A constant litany. The tree had kept his own words from him, ignored the sentiment that came forth. Showed him truth, pure truth even as Loki had begged for more to understand, craved answers and demanded that it stop. Cried out under the weight of it.

The tree had shown him his fate, marked him for the most final of tasks. Called him to complete it in time. Perfect apathy, boundless knowledge. 

None have looked upon the tree and lived.

Loki doesn't apologize aloud, but presses part of his magic against the tree. Father Mother Beginning End Center Life Source. Embedded in the magic is a request for forgiveness.


	4. In which Loki is found.

Rhigosis.  
(Avengers Fiction.)

Author Note: I do not own what is not mine.  
Disclaimer: Instances of mind control and compulsion. On a lighter note? I'm hand-waving the possibility of Loki starving to death, magic. 

…

…

Loki is brought to his feet. Abrasive pressure applied to his shoulders, upward force and a jostling spin. He is turned around, eyed over. Looked at. Appraised.

He stands. Blood flecking the corners of his eyes. Startled by the absence of the tree. 

It is still there, looming and expansive. Visible in the corner of his sight as he is touched by mortal creatures. Though the lack, the silence of his own mind and the muted hum of magic that comes from the tree… it is not the same.

Absence he cannot explain.

The fabric has returned, woven itself over his upper arms and draped a wide hood across his shoulders. Loki reaches for his magic and it greets him. Welcoming and honed to a point. Ready for task, lethal in it‘s potential. He can feel the tree, sense it with a part of him that innately knows magic, recognizes it where it appears.

A single step.

He hears the being before him move. The grasp on each shoulder tightens. Understanding comes. There are others here. Alive. Not of the tree. Not called here by the tree.

He wonders if they have fallen. Eyes flicker upwards at the sound of a voice. A shade of complex blue he has never seen before. 

“What is your name?”  
He is compelled to answer.  
“I am Loki.”  
His voice is a graceful ruin.

…

They take him.

He goes willingly.

…

Someone places a hand on his back. Brings him inside. Soft boots appear on his feet, muffling the sound of already silent steps. His magic strains in him, begs to be let unto the world. Whatever world this is. Loki knows not. So he allows himself to be escorted.

He is shown a room.   
Offered it.   
Accepts it.   
Waits there.   
Sits on the bed that is dressed in thin sheets.   
He looks at the fireplace that has a grate and other trappings.   
There is no wood.   
It is a prison. 

Loki knows.   
He understands.

The tree had left memories in him. He watches the world break apart, again and again. This cannot be helped. He sees his brothers lifeless eyes open wide, dust powdered onto his skin. Odin’s corpse hanging from a limb of the tree. Swaying in a place that has no wind. Every life. Every death. They burden him, press at him. Split a fracture further open.

His magic sparks, a flare inside his mind and he pulls away from the memories. A body approaches. Comes. The eyes from before. That presence. It is not apathy, not the stoic will of the tree. This being wants. Bends and forces.

A hand is brought to his cheek gently. Thumb to his temple. Loki feels his body shudder. Revulsion and understanding in equal parts. Complex blue eyes look into his. He is told of his condition, his body’s obvious weakness. His starvation at the base of the tree. The cuts across one side of his face and the scabs on his lips.

He is offered.   
A sweeping phrase and a slight flex of a free hand.   
Rest. Food. Sleep.   
He is fated to bring nine worlds to an end.   
In that knowledge lies a smaller truth.  
He is capable of felling the tree that bears the universe.  
Loki eases out his magic, allowing it to be seen.   
Forcibly visible.   
Sparking along the backs of his hands.   
Weaving the cuts on his face closed.   
He is offered.   
Holds onto the glance of those expansive blue eyes.   
Demonstrates a fraction of his ability.

…

They leave him alone. 

The sky darkens. Loki goes to the bed. Lays restless. He had accepted the food but not eaten it. Looked at it with distrust and continued to count his exposed ribs. The fabric shifts, growing thicker and heavier. Loki shuts his eyes.

He wakes to an afternoon sun. A plate of food just outside the door. A wine skin. 

That day passes. Followed by another three. Loki burns the food in the fires he summons each night. Fire is in his blood. Ice his birthright. Such telling contradictions, those inherent truths. Stares at the backs of his hands. Ignores the always present chill that seeps into the room. He sleeps. He paces. 

The end of all things plays a persistent memory in the back of his mind.

…

The door is not locked. Loki stays inside the room, there is no reason to leave. He banishes the food to the fire. He sits with his back to the stone wall and his eyes on the door. He waits.

The All Father’s wife had crowned him king.

…

Somebody opens the door. 

Loki cannot recall how long he has occupied the room. It should bother him more than it does. Only he is too bound up in the task of pulling his memories out of the tangled ruin of everything the tree had shown him. Magic holds back the starvation. He can count his ribs.

…

He follows a guard with heavy footsteps.

He had felt them, even as the tree sought to keep him from seeing. The tree had known, so had Loki learned of it. The two humans who sleep in the trunk of the tree. They were dead-but-not-dead. Waiting in stasis for the dawn of the universe they will inherit. Built upon the ashes of the one Loki will burn.

Heavy doors open wide. Loki enters, walks forward with ease.

He was a king, once upon a time.

…

Surreal blue eyes.

Taller than Loki. The smooth easy words of an apology. He hadn't meant to ignore. Would Loki care to forgive him.

He nods. He is capable of forgiveness.

The voice. Smooth and low and dark. Heavy. Pushes into Loki’s mind and holds tight, like a root. Calls Loki forward until he is standing right in front of the being. A hand reaches forward, a curious ring. That impossible blue. The slightest brush of metal on his cheek.

He leans into the touch.

…

He is offered a redemption. Something powerful presses at his mind until it cracks under the strain. Loki cannot keep the memories of the tree separate from his own while managing to keep the magic in his body buried just under the surface of his skin. 

The voice in his head is not of the tree. 

While the tree had offered everything. Image. Whole sections of lives played out decade by second. This voice. This newly present entity in his head, it guides his splintering thoughts into focus. Tells him that he was born to rule. Promises an army in exchange for the completion of a task.

Loki listens, eyes closed as that voice washes into him.


	5. In which Loki is deposited on earth.

Rhigosis.  
(Avengers Fiction)

Author Note: I do not own what is not mine.  
Disclaimer: References to the events in The Avengers. If you have not yet seen that film, spoiler alert. Also worth mention, nobody in this chapter is an example of solid mental health. General Angst.

…

…

Loki arrived upon earth. 

Knelt before the power of the thing he sought. It had called to him, across the spans of the universe. He had felt it’s strength and Loki had understood. Had went to it. It is a whisper, the smallest reminder of the tree’s magic echoing in him.

He had lain a body out upon a stone altar and offered himself up as a sacrifice. Carved out a mortal eye in order to truly see.

They catch him.

…

There is a woman flying the craft they bring him into. Barton’s memory whispers very quietly. Something sparks behind Loki’s eyes. 

He ignores it, allows the memory of cold eyes, lethal ability and overwhelming debt to fall into the memories from the tree. 

He feels Thor press a thumb against his jugular, fingers splayed across his throat. Thunder hails from the clouds and lightning flickers across the sky. Loki cannot bring himself to look into his former brother’s face.

He wants to ask Thor to squeeze tighter. To kill him now, eons before either one of them is meant to die. 

…

Loki waits, sifting through the new memories of people who had been wrapped up in magic and bent to a new will. The tree has already shown him every life. The duplicate memories press more urgently against the back of his eyes. He tries to numb himself to them. 

Presses a single finger to his temple and waits for the mechanisms to play themselves out.

…

There is enough sanity left in him to sense her. Attune to her life force. Brace for the onslaught of potential triggers as Barton’s sentiment screams through him.

She stands, composed. Loki knows a lie when he sees it. Understands that her posture is desperation, duty, hope, and a bitter faith in her hard-earned abilities. He knows the implicit trust that Barton has placed in her. It calms the ends of his own fraying nerves.

Barton’s memories of her are beautiful. All apathetic grace and brilliance.

Loki listens as she bargains for the life of one man. He knows that should he swear to spare Barton, she would gladly offer her life as forfeit. Along with the lives of every human on the vessel. He applauds Barton’s faith in her. 

She is elegant, standing on the other side of thick glass. Eloquent as she trades words with the father of lies. Loki wonders what it would feel like to bury himself in her mind. The tree has already shown him. She is a killer and a monster same as he.

Loki stands. Strides forward carefully, senses her vision fall to his form. Her curiosity is disarming and damning.

He knows how his voice sounds. In another lifetime he had been praised for it. Used it to seduce and take, claim what was not his to know. He begins to speak and he catches the hint of something cross her face. Then it is gone. She is untouchable and coated in icy indifference. He knows the strength of that façade, has perfected it over the course of his many decades. Ice is his birthright.

That will not do. He needs. Wants. Must see her fall apart and shatter as her earth spins the wrong direction. Loki would like nothing more than to threaten her with the thing she fears most. The only fear she still harbors after a childhood spent in blood. He wants to know the loss of something brilliant before he bears the loss of everything. 

He sifts through Barton’s memories and smiles.

Thor staggers eight steps back on his very last day, felled by a creature Loki brings to life. There is a glitch in his mind that lets him mourn it anew with each recollection.

The lie smith levels a threat, empty because of the knowledge inside himself. This world isn’t fated to break today, he knows, just as he knows he is destined to fail. He is meant to see the woman before him triumph. 

The tree already showed him, the knowing presses at his veins. Reminds him that nothing he does will change any of it. 

The words cut her apart. Loki observes that her fear is beautiful. Despair has never looked so attractive upon a human face. The tree’s memories clatter around the spaced between his own thoughts. She turns her back to him and he mourns not seeing her face. Mourns that her potential is endless and that her lifetime passes through his head between heartbeats.

The tree’s memory of the moment plays out a half second ahead of present time. He sees her turn around in his mind before she does so in reality. The stopgap in time sends his magic humming loudly across his nerves.

She thanks him for his cooperation, a smile across her face as she bows.

He understands that he will see her again.

…

End.

…

Author note: The “world tree” in Norse myth is called Yggdrasil. It is an Ash tree of enormous size. Odin hung from it in order to learn nine songs that would allow him to do impossible things. It is mentioned (in Norse myth) that Loki has the ability to walk on the branches of Yggdrasil in order to travel between worlds.

I took a bit of heavy artistic license with this (as I was unable to find any reference to other characters from Norse myth actively interacting with Yggdrasil) and made this fiction based upon the idea that Loki and Odin are the only two beings to ever “see” the tree.

Norse myth also states that the tree houses the bodies of two people, who will sleep until the tree is destroyed and awaken to a new universe.

Yggdrasil gets a shout-out in the Marvel cinematic universe, the tree inside Asgard’s palace? (The glowing, magic-infused perfect-looking piece of elegance?) Reference to Yggdrasil. When Thor draws a diagram of the nine realms in the first Thor film? Reference to Yggdrasil.

This fiction will have a companion piece.


End file.
